Quotes About Process

I rarely listen to music while writing. I wish I could, but it distracts me.

Rarely does a complete idea come to me. I basically start with just a small scene or a snatch of dialogue and force myself to write and to keep writing. Sometimes it becomes a book.

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

Don't ask what it means or what it refers to. Don't ask what the work is. Rather, see what the work does.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

What a fine line there is between artistry and insanity. There's no formula for it, and I think a lot of people when they're around you - even those closest to you - when you're in that whirl of creativity and you're grabbing those things out of the air, there's no rational process.

I never map things out in advance. It would be better if I did and more economical in terms of time, but I've found that if you work out a plot line from beginning to end, at the beginning it becomes very rational.

Buying a home is a very emotional process. It's important to remain rational and stick with your price limit while buying.

I love listening to demos. They're so raw.

I've never seen myself as a pop singer. I grew up listening to gospel, soul and rock. My approach to pop is that, when I was doing my album, I wanted to have raw, genuine lyrics, but wanted it to be easy to process.

You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.

I've always thought of myself as an organic writer, rather than a cerebral one. I feel my way along as I go, hoping I'll get to the place I intend to reach.

With actors, it's really about feeding them all the time. I don't get involved in their process. I try to do the opposite, feeding them, feeding them, feeding them, and you can see very easily how they react to it.

Anytime you really take a close look at people who are dealing with the aging process, you're going to have a complicated reaction to what you're seeing and feeling. If you're in the middle of it, those emotions are going to be quadrupled. It's immediate, it's relatable, so it's good human drama.

The process of being a writer is much more interior than being a scientist, because science is so reactionary.

When I make a film, the mixing process is very long, and you hear and watch the material in every form, so that totally shreds your ability to perceive it. So after the mixing, there's no way I can have the emotions or the reactions to my films in the same way.

I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

It's fun to play a part in the process of helping to inform readers about their political leaders.

I think publishers need to be the ones that publish the books and control that process: finding writers, helping them with their work, finding readers. I think writers need that.

I have always loved the process of making the music, reading the letters from the fans who get married to my music, have children to my music and play my music at their funerals.

At readings, audience members sometimes ask if I keep writing past the two hours if I'm on a roll, but I don't. I figure that if I'm on a roll, it's partially because I know I'm about to stop.

I do a lot of revising on paper. Sometimes I think I should just write longhand - what I type reads very different once I print it out.

Whenever I hear the narration for a new film, I have this process back home where my mother reads all my scripts.